Inbox not returning certain values from a repeat

[Katie_Clark]

Hello,

I need users to be able to edit existing surveys after submission, and this has to be done through the inbox since the survey contains nested repeats. I added "allowUpdates=true query" to the bind::esri:parameters column and that worked to retrieve almost all the data from the repeats. However, there is still a question for species name that is not returning when I open the survey in the inbox. The behavior seems somewhat irregular as well, as I tested this last night and it appeared to be working.

Here's what it *should* look like, when opening a previously submitted survey from the inbox:

But often when I open the group to view what was submitted, it looks like this, where the percent cover and dominant status from before are still populated, but the species name and indicator status aren't.

Any ideas what might be going on, and how I can fix it?

Thanks!

[JeremieCote]

Could it be the names of your choices in the choice sheet? Like if the names use unsupported characters it could cause problems.

[DougBrowning]

All your versions up to date?  I think this was one that got fixed?

[Katie_Clark · Accepted solution]

Thank you @DougBrowning and @JeremieCote for your responses! I did think it had something to do with the choice names at first, and I tried making edits to those CSV files but it was still giving me trouble. I believe what was actually causing the issues for me was using the relevant instead of the body::esri:visible columns. This blog by Ismael helped to explain the key difference between the two columns:

The relevant column, like body::esri:visible, controls the visibility of a question, but it also clears the value in the question when the expression evaluates to false. Big difference! Visible and relevant are two very different things!

The relevant column affects both the question's visibility AND its value. This can be both very useful and also sometimes problematic. For example, say a question is relevant and the user answers it. Now the user changes something in the form that makes that question not relevant. At that point, whatever value was entered in the question is cleared. That data is lost forever. This is often known as question skipping, which is different to simply controlling the visibility of a question.

I updated my XLS form and submitted some test surveys, made several edits through the inbox, and things appear to be working as they should for now. So, hopefully problem solved! 🙂